


it's a long way down to the bottom of the river

by haipollai



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Clones, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, M/M, Running Away Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-13
Updated: 2014-02-13
Packaged: 2018-01-12 06:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haipollai/pseuds/haipollai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky wants to reassure him it'll be ok. The job is done, the violation erased. Except Bucky knows that things like that don't just disappear. Steve will never stop wondering. Bucky knows intimately what that feels like, like a stranger in your own head.</p>
<p>He holds Steve tighter and closes his eyes, willing himself to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's a long way down to the bottom of the river

Steve is pretending to be asleep when Bucky gets back. Bucky knows he's faking but lets him get away with it, slipping quietly into bed and fitting against his back, resting his flesh and blood arm over Steve's waist. Steve entwines their fingers and lets out a breath, almost a sigh.

Bucky wants to reassure him it'll be ok. The job is done, the violation erased. Except Bucky knows that things like that don't just disappear. Steve will never stop wondering. Bucky knows intimately what that feels like, like a stranger in your own head.

He holds Steve tighter and closes his eyes, willing himself to sleep.

He wakes up alone in bed but he can hear Steve close by. Sharp breathing, soft grunts, either jacking off or working out. Bucky opens his eyes and sprawls over Steve's side of the bed to find him doing push ups in his boxers. His skin is slick with sweat, pushing himself hard, probably for awhile now. He doesn't look like he's going to slow down or stop or even notice Bucky anytime soon, so Bucky reaches out his arm and lightly touches an old scar on Steve's back.

Steve goes rigid under his touch, arms fully extended and Bucky can see the faint tremor.. "A bayonet gave you this," Bucky murmurs, tracing the ragged scar. Steve heals fast, but doesn't always heal clean. "Was aimed at me and you threw yourself in the way. While we were in the middle of fucking nowhere too."

"It wasn't the middle of nowhere," Steve whispers. "Knew where we were." But he starts to relax, slowly bending his knees, taking some of the weight off of his hands and toes.

"Felt like it. Was healed by the time we made it back to camp. Don't think you even saw the medic bout it."

"I- I didn't. Too many other guys were hurt worse." He snorts softly and lets his head drop. "Bucky-"

"You're safe ok? I've got you." Steve twists around quick but before Bucky's instincts can kick him through the lingering daze of sleep, his lips touch Bucky's. The angle is awkward with Bucky still pressed against the mattress but there's enough emotion in it to make him choke up. "The other- from before," Steve's face closes up at the mention of one of the clones so Bucky pushes on fast, "he didn't have any of your scars. And I know what gave you each and every one."

Steve gives him a small smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. His fingers close loosely over Bucky's wrist, brushing over a scar there from a blade during his training as a boy. (Jim used to give him looks when he saw the scar, obviously assuming something else.) "I don't know all your scars," Steve's eyes drift and Bucky knows he's looking at his back. Department X did their own training with him. "But I know most. I know you."

He can't help but grin and tug Steve in for another kiss. "We're quite the fucking pair."

Steve laughs against his lips though there's no humor in it. "Blind leading the blind?"

-

Steve dreams of the room sometimes. He doesn't say anything to Bucky about it, but Bucky knows a memory masquerading as a nightmare when he sees it. Bucky always shakes him awake if he can, yanks him out before the nightmare can stick.

He's usually too late.

The terror in Steve's face is haunting, worse than facing the little boy with Steve's eyes. Bucky presses kisses to his scars, tries to reassure him that it's ok. Sometimes Steve listens. Sometimes the emotion becomes guilt, Steve convinced that he should be the one caring for Bucky after all that Bucky's been through.

Bucky isn't even sure if he wants that, being there for Steve gets him out of his own head, gives him a mission to focus on. So he tries to kiss away the guilt. Prove to Steve that he's something close to whole, he knows better than to try to pretend he's healed. They see their own damage in each other and know there's no healing.

-

Bucky keeps an eye on the news when Steve finally manages to fall asleep. They're outside of Mexico City having run from SHIELD almost a month ago, getting the paperwork to get out of the country had been the easy part, making sure they weren't tracked had taken up time.

Steve sleeps easier now, one arm tossed carelessly over Bucky's waist. His right hand curls around his hip and Bucky can feel the scarring there. Steve's newest. His own stress and panic was likely messing with his body's ability to heal itself. The bandages had stayed on for over a week and the skin was still stiff. Bucky carefully takes Steve's hand in his and traces the worst scar over his palm.

Most of the skin was burned from the vat's low temperature, necessary to make sure the clones stayed perfectly preserved until needed. A twisted adaptation of the same technology used to keep Bucky in stasis between uses.

Steve had stuck his hand straight in, pulling out one of the embryos instead. Bucky wasn't sure exactly what happened next, he had to turn around to throw up. But there was a crash and he could hear Steve shoving at the vat, using all of his strength to tip it over, destroy everything inside. Further in, in carefully organized and labeled cubbies were more, half grown and deformed, relegated to experiments to be learned from. Mistakes for the scientists to not make again.

One of them had still been alive.

The worst of the scarring to Steve's hand came from a smashed piece of glass that had cut his palm in his desperation to destroy everything. Together they'd managed to set the lab on fire and almost got rid of everything. Except for the current living clone, the little boy being trained in a facility in Kentucky.

Steve, Bucky's Steve not the gun runner he met in the 60s or the mercenary in Cuba in the 70s, isn't a killer so Bucky had taken care of the boy. He thought there would be more guilt over it, but he came back to Steve that night and slept easily. 

He presses a kiss to Steve's palm and feels him shift and slowly start to wake.

"Anything exciting?" Steve mumbles, cracking his eyes open just enough to look up at Bucky.

"Nah, usual crap." He entwines his flesh and blood fingers with Steve's and trails the metal ones along his arm, tracing veins and muscles up and over his shoulder. "World sucks, same old." Steve grunts and closes his eyes again.

"We should get moving soon," Steve sighs. SHIELD wasn't happy when the lab and all its research was burned to nothing. They want their super soldiers. They want Steve, and maybe Bucky too for the diluted version in his own blood.

Bucky slides down the best until he's hovering over Steve. "Tonight?" He kisses him softly at first, sucking teasingly on Steve's lower lip. He can feel Steve's smile, loose and easy with sleep.

"Yea, ok. Somewhere warm." His leg hooks around Bucky's, rocking up into him. In the weeks they've been running they haven't done much of anything that isn't tainted with desperation and fear. Bucky finds himself grinning at how easy this feels now, moving slow and careful, taking time so they're both comfortable.

"Like being warm," he murmurs. "You're warm." He presses a kiss to Steve's neck, feeling his pulse pound, echoing Bucky's.

"Bucky-" A hint of panic creeps into his voice as he holds Bucky tighter. The constant panic that what if the man in bed with Bucky isn't really Steve Rogers, the little boy from Brooklyn but just another body grown in a lab, filled with memories that aren't his own.

"Mine," Bucky whispers, kissing him hard. His fingers find a bullet wound in Steve's thigh, patched up in the field so it never healed clean. It's almost faded now, but still there. He digs his fingers in until Steve groans in pain but presses closer to him at the same time. "Mine," Bucky repeats, pressing his lips to Steve's chest.

Steve lets out a breath, and the tension seems to all leave him at once. 

-

Sometimes in the middle of the night when Bucky's memories keep him awake, he wonders what if Steve isn't his.

But then he looks at him, and realizes even if the man beside him is a fake, he wouldn't give a fuck and they would still be right here together. Bucky would kill any other man with Steve's face to keep it that way.

**Author's Note:**

> +this is probably my own fault but i'm gonna blame beardsley  
> +title from delta rae's bottom of the river which has been stuck in my head for days  
> +i should probably apologize and just go back to writing snowboarder au


End file.
